Mailing List Archive

Hi,

Le Tuesday 12 April 2005 16:35, The Cunctator a écrit :
> We should be making an official comment on the issue of copyright orphans
> now before the U.S. Copyright Office. The deadline is May 9.
>
> From http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/:
(...)
> This is clearly something the Wikimedia Foundation should officially weigh
> in on.

I totally agree with this.

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux

Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Le Tuesday 12 April 2005 16:35, The Cunctator a écrit :
>
>
>>We should be making an official comment on the issue of copyright orphans
>>now before the U.S. Copyright Office. The deadline is May 9.
>>
>>From http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/:
>>
>>
>(...)
>
>
>>This is clearly something the Wikimedia Foundation should officially weigh
>>in on.
>>
>>
>I totally agree with this.
>
I already put my previous submissions into the mailing list. It's No.
697 in the records of the Copyright Office. All 714 submissions may be
read as pdf files. Is there a way to do a text search for all those pdf
files to see if any other submissions used the string "wiki"?

The current round of submissions is for responses to what has already
been submitted. In the sampling that I have looked at there seems to be
a very strong something-needs-to-be-done trend.

One observation that I have made about the submissions favouring the
status quo is the emphasis on the rights of current authors, and seem
not to mention the rights of the author's descendants at all. Having
Life + 70 really doesn't do anything for the authors themselves. More
ironic is their tendency to view proposed changes to the copyright
regime as attempts by corporate interests to undermine the rights of
authors and artists. It seems to me that the corporate interests have
sold them a bill of goods.

Another important article to read from "Wired" is this by Julian
Dibbell: http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html
There is a lot for many of us to learn from what is going on in Brazil.

Ec

All right. It seems a good idea to me;

***However***, I think we need help from you both tc and ec.

In a similar way that was done for the ESA, would it be possible that
you draft a statement (something diplomatic :-)), send it to us, and
possibly we modify it... and sign it then send it as a group of people
or organisation ?

Could you both help write such a thing ?

Ant


The Cunctator a écrit:
> We should be making an official comment on the issue of copyright orphans
> now before the U.S. Copyright Office. The deadline is May 9.
>
>>From http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/:
>
> The Copyright Office seeks to examine the issues raised by ³orphan works,²
> i.e., copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to
> locate. Concerns have been raised that the uncertainty surrounding ownership
> of such works might needlessly discourage subsequent creators and users from
> incorporating such works in new creative efforts or making such works
> available to the public. The Office is now seeking written comments from all
> interested parties. Specifically, the Office is interested in whether there
> are compelling concerns raised by orphan works that merit a legislative,
> regulatory or other solution, and what type of solution could effectively
> address these concerns without conflicting with the legitimate interests of
> authors and right holders.
>
> See this story: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67139,00.html for
> details.
>
> Procedure for sending comment:
>
> Send to orphanworks@loc.gov a message containing the name of the person
> making the submission, his or her title and organization (if the submission
> is on behalf of an organization), mailing address, telephone number, telefax
> number (if any) and e-mail address. The message should also identify the
> document clearly as either a comment or reply comment. The document itself
> must be sent as a MIME attachment, and must be in a single file in either:
> (1) Adobe Portable Document File (PDF) format (preferred); (2) Microsoft
> Word 2000 or earlier; (3) WordPerfect 8.0 or earlier; (4) Rich Text File
> (RTF) format; or (5) ASCII text file format.
>
> This is clearly something the Wikimedia Foundation should officially weigh
> in on.

On 4/12/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
> I already put my previous submissions into the mailing list. It's No.
> 697 in the records of the Copyright Office. All 714 submissions may be
> read as pdf files. Is there a way to do a text search for all those pdf
> files to see if any other submissions used the string "wiki"?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Acopyright.gov%2Forphan%2F+%28wiki+OR+wikipedia+OR+wikimedia%29&btnG=Search&meta=

www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0236-Waddell.pdf
www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0663-IndependentFilm.pdf
www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0523-Schack.pdf
www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0580-Kilfiger.pdf
www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0025-Krupp.pdf
www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0697-Saintonge.pdf

Stuart Orford wrote:

>On 4/12/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I already put my previous submissions into the mailing list. It's No.
>>697 in the records of the Copyright Office. All 714 submissions may be
>>read as pdf files. Is there a way to do a text search for all those pdf
>>files to see if any other submissions used the string "wiki"?
>>
>>
>
>http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Acopyright.gov%2Forphan%2F+%28wiki+OR+wikipedia+OR+wikimedia%29&btnG=Search&meta=
>
>
Many thanks that's a big help

>www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0236-Waddell.pdf
>
One paragraph contribution by Wikipedian Michael Waddell urging them to
do something, with emphasis on images

>www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0663-IndependentFilm.pdf
>
Submission by interns at USC School of Law on behalf of independant
filmmakers. Makes concrete proposals to open things up, but their
proposals could be improved. No substantive reference to wikis or open
source, but references Wikipedia's [[Ephemeral film]] in a footnote

>www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0523-Schack.pdf
>
One paragraph contribution by Wikipedian Brian Schack

>www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0580-Kilfiger.pdf
>
A short presentation by Wikipedian James Kilfiger. Emphasis on images.

>www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0025-Krupp.pdf
>
One paragraph presentation by Wikipedian Alex Krupp. Emphasis on
sharing with third world

>www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0697-Saintonge.pdf
>
My own presentation

I'm glad to see that four other Wikipedians took the time to make
comments. Perhaps someone can track down their user names and give them
an official "thank you" from the Board.

I have read several submissions already, and there is an apparently
clear majority of them who favour doing something about orphan works..

I agree with Anthere that we perhaps should submit something
representing WMF, but it's hard to know what kind of official position
we should take In my own submission I certainly could not go so far as
to state that I was representing the Foundation. They were entirely my
own opinions. What points should we be makeing?

Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I agree with Anthere that we perhaps should submit something
> representing WMF, but it's hard to know what kind of official position
> we should take In my own submission I certainly could not go so far
> as to state that I was representing the Foundation. They were
> entirely my own opinions. What points should we be makeing?

I was thinking about this a bit, and I'm not that sure it strongly
impacts us, especially in a way that's easy to convincingly explain.
The major thing Wikimedia is known for is Wikipedia, which really is
unlike most of what's been written in the past, whether in or out of
copyright. Sure, we imported en masse some 1911 EB articles, but even
if all copyright disappeared entirely, the current revision of EB would
need substantial work to be turned into good Wikipedia articles. I'm
not sure it would buy us that much over just getting some more writers.
And with images, we can either generally take images ourselves
(something that's happening increasingly often), or rely on fair use for
historically important images that are still under copyright. There are
a few cases where asking for permission would be helpful, but in general
an orphaned work is no worse from our perspective than a work that's
non-orphaned but where a copyright holder simply refuses to grant us a
GFDL or CC license to it. Wikisource probably suffers the most direct
impact, but again, orphaned works aren't a unique problem---copyrighted
but non-orphaned works are no better.

I get the impression that the case the copyright office is most
interested in is one that doesn't impact us at all: The case where
someone is willing to pay a copyright holder for a license to use their
work (e.g. for a film adaptation of a book), but cannot do so because
the copyright holder is unable to be located.

-Mark

Hi,

Le Tuesday 19 April 2005 08:46, Delirium a écrit :
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > I agree with Anthere that we perhaps should submit something
> > representing WMF, but it's hard to know what kind of official position
> > we should take In my own submission I certainly could not go so far
> > as to state that I was representing the Foundation. They were
> > entirely my own opinions. What points should we be makeing?

(...)
> I get the impression that the case the copyright office is most
> interested in is one that doesn't impact us at all: The case where
> someone is willing to pay a copyright holder for a license to use their
> work (e.g. for a film adaptation of a book), but cannot do so because
> the copyright holder is unable to be located.

Trying to broaden the issue, I think that there are many cases where Wikimedia
projects would benefit from such works if they would be available. I don't
know about any specific documents which would be covered by the copyright
office, but I can name documents in other countries and languages.

Two examples from what I have encontered myself:
1. French postage stamps from the 1920s and 1930s. The owners of copyright are
the heirs of the drawers and engravers and are obviously quite difficult to
locate.
2. Translations of M. K. Gandhi's writings from the 1920s and the 1930s.

I believe this is quite the same for translations of many languages of this
period.

AFAIK, there is not such an office in France. I don't know about India, but
the current editor of Gandhi's writings, Navajivan Press, easily allows free
use of the original works. It can't help to find old translators of Gandhi's
works however. In India, copyright term is 60 years after the dead of the
author, so these translations may be in the public domain.

> -Mark

Regards,

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux

Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> I agree with Anthere that we perhaps should submit something
>> representing WMF, but it's hard to know what kind of official
>> position we should take In my own submission I certainly could not
>> go so far as to state that I was representing the Foundation. They
>> were entirely my own opinions. What points should we be makeing?
>
> I was thinking about this a bit, and I'm not that sure it strongly
> impacts us, especially in a way that's easy to convincingly explain.
> The major thing Wikimedia is known for is Wikipedia, which really is
> unlike most of what's been written in the past, whether in or out of
> copyright. Sure, we imported en masse some 1911 EB articles, but even
> if all copyright disappeared entirely, the current revision of EB
> would need substantial work to be turned into good Wikipedia
> articles. I'm not sure it would buy us that much over just getting
> some more writers. And with images, we can either generally take
> images ourselves (something that's happening increasingly often), or
> rely on fair use for historically important images that are still
> under copyright. There are a few cases where asking for permission
> would be helpful, but in general an orphaned work is no worse from our
> perspective than a work that's non-orphaned but where a copyright
> holder simply refuses to grant us a GFDL or CC license to it.
> Wikisource probably suffers the most direct impact, but again,
> orphaned works aren't a unique problem---copyrighted but non-orphaned
> works are no better.
>
> I get the impression that the case the copyright office is most
> interested in is one that doesn't impact us at all: The case where
> someone is willing to pay a copyright holder for a license to use
> their work (e.g. for a film adaptation of a book), but cannot do so
> because the copyright holder is unable to be located.

We can't afford to be short-sighted in determining how this affects us,
and I don't see ease of explanation as a significant criterion. It's
clear that the effect of these issues is most direct and immediate on
Wikisource, but this does not prevent the issue from coming up
elsewhere. In Wikipedia we still require original writing at the same
time as we reject original research. Fair use is barely tolerated, and
even though taking our own images is often a possibility this is, as you
acknowledge, not an available option for historical photographs. We
could probably invoke fair use to a greater extent than has been the
case, but a more specific and objective set of criteria that could be
applied _before_ we consider fair use would make life much easier for
our editors.

I'm less worried about copyright holders who refuse to give permission,
than about ones whom we can't find at all. With a refusal you have the
benefit of knowing where that person stands, and if the refusal is based
on wanting to keep the material away from the public eye the fair use
argument that publishing would not affect the market for the work
becomes much stronger. With orphan works the copyright holders would
probably often be delighted to have the work published if you can ever
find them to ask. Many descendants have no clue that their ancestor
ever wrote anything. The uncertainty is the big problem.

We had a discussion recently about whether a person had the right to
give his work into the public domain. I think that the argument against
doing this was unsound, but the question does come up. A recurring
problem lies in whether a person di in fact put his work in the public
domain. The issue has come up in regards to "The Man Who Planted
Trees", and whether a letter by the author was sufficient evidence that
he had done so. It would be nice to have a central registry for public
licences of various sorts or for grants into the public domain. As one
of my more adventurous ideas I would even suggest a charitable donation
deduction on one's taxes for giving a work into the public domain. 8-)
That could bring a lot of orphan works out of obscurity.

I don't think that I would impugn the same motives on the copyright
office that you do. If anything Sonny Bono's efforts brought the
copyright pendulum to the extreme end of its swing, and far enough there
to make more people notice that it had gone too far. The Copyright
Office is in position to receive a lot of complaints about the present
situation at a time when it can do little about it. Many of these
complaints may be in the form of letters by constituents to their
congressman that have been referred for explanation. I'm sure they
would appreciate having that job made easier. Never underestimate the
power of rural little old ladies who just want to update the history of
their local community only to be thwarted by a bureaucracy that prevents
them from using the material of a neighbour who died childless thirty
years ago. They know he's dead because they attended the funeral.

Ec